Chapter 20
THEY WERE BORROWED
Isla
The whole way home, I thought about my parents.
No, this wasn’t the same situation, though the conundrum was so similar.
I couldn’t stand in the way of Joey getting the family he deserved.
That little boy needed Declan in his life.
Now that I knew why Harper had been gone all this time, how could I stand in her way?
How could I even ask Declan to choose me over her?
From the beginning, my crush on him had been a bad idea.
Letting my feelings for him grow to this thing bottled up in my chest was an even worse idea.
I had made so much progress, and in one fell swoop, I lost the place I had come to think of as home, the guy I thought could be the one for me, and a little family of my own.
Losing wasn’t exactly the right way to describe what happened today.
None of those things were truly mine to begin with—they were borrowed.
They were borrowed, I repeated that in my head over and over.
The hole in my chest didn’t get smaller.
The pain of losing them didn’t subside, but the mist fogging my mind cleared enough so that I could think about what to do next.
I had to leave the apartment. Tonight. And then tomorrow, I had to start all over again.
At least this time around, I had money and a job.
“We’re here.” Tommy lifted his gaze to meet mine in the rearview mirror.
“Would you mind waiting? I’m just getting a few things.”
“Not at all. Take your time.”
He didn’t seem surprised that I was moving out practically in the middle of the night. Maybe he had seen Declan kick women out at odd hours. I had no reason to believe that other than I really, really wanted Declan to be the bad guy. So tomorrow I could go back to thinking he was a complete jerk.
“Thanks.” I climbed out and headed toward Frank, who stood dutifully while he held the door open for me. I stopped halfway to the elevator bay and turned to face him. “Frank, would you mind?”
“Not at all.” He gestured for me to go on.
“Thank you.” I smiled, glad he didn’t let me finish the question—would you mind helping me move out? I was also glad he didn’t ask where Declan was or why I had to get out of here tonight. No doubt Declan texted him to let him know I was on my way here and that my services were no longer required.
Stop it.
I was more than his employee or a nanny.
Even if it had been for just a few days, Declan did consider me his girlfriend.
He tried. He really did. This other thing came out of nowhere.
God, this was definitely a record for me.
When it came to love, I’d never had much luck.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and tried to focus on the task at hand.
I couldn’t worry about what my situation looked like to Frank and Tommy.
When I entered Declan’s apartment I was greeted by the familiar scent of fresh flowers.
Once a week, Mrs. Ross replaced them all over the apartment because he liked the smell.
His words from last night swirled in my head: “It’s in your hair, like fresh lilacs.
” The dim light and stillness of the place told me Joey and Sarah were already asleep in my old room.
I hugged myself and made my way to Declan’s suite to collect my two suitcases. He had moved them into his room this morning, but between the two rounds of sex, meeting the new nanny, and then work, I hadn’t had time to unpack and fill the space he had made for me in his closet.
The entire moving out bit took all of twenty minutes—that included the time riding the elevator up and down. I waited until Frank loaded my luggage in the trunk and then climbed in the back seat. Tommy nodded once then asked the question I’d been dreading to answer since I left the sex club.
“Where to?”
The good news was I had choices. The bad news was, I didn’t particularly like any of them.
I could go to a hotel for the night, or I could call Mom and have Tommy drive me to Bensonhurst. I shivered at the thought of leaving the city.
For some reason, I felt like if I did leave, I’d never make it back.
It was a silly idea, but I couldn’t shake it off.
I fished my phone out of my purse and thought about how much I didn’t want to be alone tonight. With a deep breath, I texted Louisa.
Me: Need a place to crash for the night. You still up?
Louisa: Yes! Come on over.
She added a few martini glasses to the end of her text, then dropped me a pin.
The lump in my throat dropped to my stomach, and the tears I had been holding back streamed down my cheeks.
In just a few visits, we had fast tracked our relationship from strangers to sisters that texted in the middle of the night.
“Not too far.” I handed Tommy my phone so he could grab the address in the Upper West Side.
I sat back and closed my eyes. Immediately, my mind conjured images of Harper and Declan alone in that suite designed for all kinds of kinky things. I thought of his hands on her body and felt them on mine instead. How in the world was I going to get over him?
“Isla?” Tommy cleared his throat. By the look in his eyes, I couldn’t only guess he had been trying to get a response from me for a while.
“Yeah.” I sat up and scanned the streets around me.
“This is the place.” He pointed at the swanky building with a huge, canopied entrance. Beyond the glass double doors hung a sparkly chandelier over shiny marble floors—exactly where I figured someone like Nicolas would live.
“Thank you.” I beamed when I spotted Louisa’s face.
As soon as she came out to greet me, Tommy climbed out of the SUV and darted to the back of the car to get my luggage. When Louisa saw the suitcases, her eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“I promise I’m just here for a night.” I bit my lower lip.
“You’re welcome to stay for as long as you need.” The pity in her eyes was like a kick in the stomach. She knew what had happened.
“You know?”
“I saw the tweet. But I’d like to hear your version of the story. Come on. Nicolas had a quick business trip, so we have the place all to ourselves. I’m glad you called. Now neither one of us has to spend the night alone.”
“Thank you.” I hugged her. She hugged me back, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
“Let’s go.” She grabbed one suitcase and hauled it toward the door.
“Thank you, Tommy.”
“You take care now.” He nodded with a genuine smile before he hopped in the driver’s seat.
He drove away as I stood there knowing that the next time I saw him, it would be from a distance while he dropped Declan off at the office. Sadly, even that small pleasure would go away after a few weeks when Declan and his new family returned to the UK.
“You wanted an older sister, now you’ve got one. Spill.” Louisa bit into her blueberry muffin.
This morning, as soon as her babysitter got home, she dragged me to the coffee shop at the end of her street, bought a bunch of pastries for us to eat with our coffees, and sat me down by the window so she could properly get all the juicy details.
Last night, I had been too tired to tell her about Declan or anything else. I was so grateful that she took me in and didn’t ask questions at all. She simply escorted me to the spare room and left me be.
“Please don’t think less of me.” I sipped on my coffee, trying to figure out how to explain my situation with Declan.
“You slept with your boss. It happens.” She shrugged.
I stopped to gape at her, mouth open with a bear claw halfway to my lips. “How did you?”
“I’m very intuitive.” She smiled. “Also, I caught you twice looking at his profile picture online, you’re putting in double time to watch his baby, and I read the Baby Momma on Board story.”
“It’s not my baby.”
“I know that.” She inhaled. “Answer me this: are you in love with him?”
A knot tightened at the pit of my stomach. Was I in love with Declan? Of course, I was. Anyone with a pulse would be after spending a whole month with him and his baby. “He doesn’t want me.”
“Are you sure?” She added jam to her muffin then sucked the leftover jelly off the pad of her thumb. “Because I saw the picture. Both of you looked happy. And by happy, I mean I could tell you had just had sex.”
“What?” I shot a glance over my shoulder to the table behind us. If the two older women heard the “s” word, they didn’t show it. “You could tell?”
She nodded.
“He’s everything. But I can’t get in the way and ruin his chance for a real family.”
She met my gaze. After a beat, she glanced down.
My current situation with Declan hit too close to home for her.
I wanted to get up and hug her and thank her for not throwing me out last night.
Growing up, Dad left his first wife and kids to be with my mom.
We never got the whole story, but people in Bensonhurst kept the rumors going for years.
By the time Louisa and I were in middle school, everyone knew we were related.
Now here I was, more or less, repeating my mother’s story.
Declan had a chance to marry Harper and have the family he wanted.
Sure, he had said he was afraid to be a father.
But in the last few weeks, I could tell he had changed his mind about Joey.
The desperate look in his eyes, the panic I saw there when Harper told him she wanted Joey back said it all.
He wanted to make things work with Harper.
“I know what you’re thinking.” She reached out and squeezed my hand. “It’s not the same. Not even close.”
“He made his choice. I need to respect that.”
“Okay.” She put her muffin down and wiped her hands. “So let me see if I have this right. You agreed to help Declan with his brand-new baby. Then things escalated between you two…you had mind-blowing sex.”
I shifted my weight to check on the table behind us. Louisa didn’t have a filter.
“I can tell it was good. Look at you.” She pointed at my face.
“Anyway, what happened after that? The mother of his child came back and now she thinks she has a claim on him? She’s been gone for how long?
Not to mention that she didn’t tell him about the baby.
It’s almost been a year. How are you the bad guy in this scenario? ”
I opened my mouth to speak but she continued.
“And if you try to tell me that Dad left because of you. You know that that’s not true. Dad left because of Dad. End of story. It took me a while to see that, but now I know. Their choice has nothing to do with yours.”
I rubbed the side of my face. Her words made so much sense. I wish the story in my head felt the same. But whether my situation mirrored Mom’s or not, it didn’t matter. Declan had already made his choice.
“That’s the thing. I don’t get to choose. He’s already gone.”
“I don’t believe it.” She sat back, crossing her arms over her chest. “My gut tells me he’s not in love with her. Don’t give up. It isn’t over. I can see you’re afraid. Don’t be.”
“He practically proposed to her last night.” My eyes welled up with tears. Saying the words aloud cemented in my heart what my head already knew. Even if he loved me, he was really gone. “I need to move on.”
“This sucks.” She got up and hugged me. After a few seconds, she pulled back and picked up one of my curls. “We should dye our hair.”
I laughed, looking at her blue tresses. “I wish I could. But I have to find an apartment first. I can’t stay with you forever.”
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “Do you need me to go with you?”
“No. I’m good. I actually only have two places I want to look at before I make a decision.”
I had spent the last month looking for apartments for when my thirty days with Declan were over. When he asked me to be his girlfriend, I kind of forgot about all my research. Thank God I had been too busy all weekend to delete any of it.
“I knew I recognized you.” The woman behind me tapped me on the shoulder. “I guess your plan to get pregnant to catch a billionaire didn’t work.”
The tabloids had said something to that effect in their story when they assumed I was Joey’s mom.
I turned to face the woman to tell her it was rude to listen in on other people’s private conversations.
But when I did, she had her phone up to show me a picture of Declan outside of Tiffany’s. He was trending again.
My hands turned cold. I didn’t care that I didn’t know the woman.
I grabbed the phone and scrolled through to read the latest story.
He was caught outside the famous jewelry store shopping for an engagement ring, which their source assured them wasn’t for Isla—the woman who allegedly had given birth to Declan’s ten-month-old son.
The post went on and on about the details of the ring, then closed with a promise to provide more details on the identity of the woman who truly had Declan’s heart. He hadn’t wasted any time moving on.
“Let’s get out of here.” Louisa grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door.
“I should stay off social media for a while,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, you should. Don’t pay attention to what they say. I’m sure Declan—”
“Declan was there to buy a ring. Of course, he was. Of course, he’s marrying her.
She’s the mother of his only child. I told you.
I don’t get a choice in the matter.” I took a deep breath to stop the tears, but it didn’t help.
I sobbed into my hands and let the realization wash over me like a bucket of cold water. “He’s moved on. I have to do the same.”